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Best Linux Distribution (linuxjournal.com)
Linux Journal: We started things off with Best Linux Distribution, and nearly 10,000 readers voted. The winner was Debian, with many commenting "As for servers, Debian is still the best" or similar. One to watch that is rising in the polls is Manjaro (7 percent), which is independently based on the Arch Linux. Manjaro is a favorite for Linux newcomers and is known for its user-friendliness and accessibility. And, now for the top three LJ winners: Debian (33 percent), openSUSE (12 percent), and Fedora (11 percent).
No link to TFA? Then again, this is modern day slashdot.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Best Linux Distribution?
Well, that's one way to start a, cough, cough *debate* ... now where did I leave my flame resistant suit?
It's like asking what the best car is? Are you trying to transport 8 people, or 5 sheets of drywall? Asking what the best linux distro is silly and only adds to the confusion for those not familiar with linux. Personally I'm a huge fan of Debian and it's my go to unless I need some speciality distro. If someone asked me for a recommendation of install Linux for the first time they've ever done it on a laptop, Debian might not be my answer. I understand the need for Top 10 lists, and ranking systems in our lives. It makes for the best click bait. Best linux distro is just something not needed. One of the best things about Linux is the distro's can be drastically different and fit different needs. Why do we need to try to narrow it down to one?
Sent from my TARDIS
Desktop Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (18.17%)
Server Distribution of the Year - Slackware (22.40%)
I cant believe 10,000 people changed their minds in 24 hours
They just choose what somebody pushes in their face.
There is nothing to argue. There is nothing to "debate"! Obviously Slackware is the best.
You can close this story now. It's over.
Just use Windows. Choice sucks for the average user. Preinstalled is the way to go. People have no idea there is a difference between hardware and software and that you can choose to install your OS. Microsoft understood this. Why can't Linux world understand that?
Manjaro actually got 4%. Mint above it on the graph got 7%.
...After Mint I never looked back.
Windows 10 gives me hurdles of issues.
Mint Linux? Works, and works - and works. Love it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
My favorite is Alpine because it is systemd-free, light-weight, and security-focused.
An interface that never changes? Yes please.
Twinstiq, game news
I guess I'll have to manually compile my own list...
I'm a Debian user so I like the results but 33% seems a little skewed? I'm surprised the Ubuntu/Mint distributions didn't have more votes.
It all depends on what I'm trying to do with it.
Desktop, Laptop, Server, Router, DVR, NAS, Phone, IOT device?
Did I say mint?
Ok, I'm a Slackware guy at heart... but after dealing with too many issues (my laziness amongst them), switching to Mint made my life easier. I recommend now only Mint.
Debian is awesome. Mint just works.
I don't see much to argue about. Different uses and different users have different needs and preferences. As sqorbit said, the question itself is silly. Like asking "what vehicle is best?" - kinda depends on whether you want to haul 10,000 pounds of cargo, race a slalom, or impress your date. Sometimes a semi truck is the right thing for the job, sometimes a motorcycle is.
I run different distributions for different roles, and other people will prefer other distros for those same roles because they have different preferences. For example my "default" distribution for general computing is CentOS. One reason I choose CentOS is simply because it's the one I'm most familiar with, having used that lineage for 15 years under various names. Someone else might choose Debian or Ubuntu for the same reason - it's the one they know best.
A major difference to consider for desktop / laptop use is whether you prefer cutting edge new features or stability and reliability. In the Redhat / CentOS realm, Fedora is cutting edge, Redhat / CentOS is stable. Neither is right or wrong, better or worse, it just depends on what you want. So instead of spending time trying to find "the best", spend that time asking "what are my needs and which fits my needs best?"
They are all terrible for anyone who isn't super into Linux and knows his way around the terminal.
Distros like those will never be mainstream.
Ubuntu and Linux Mint are "based" on Debian so counting them as separate distros is splitting a few hairs (or would it be hares, because the differences are fuzzy?)
Linux is in far too many places for "a" "best" distro.
But it's not hard to pick candidates for the best for specific purposes.
My daughter is taking game programming and was struggling with working with Ogre and another graphics engine (I can't remember which one right now) and was struggling to do the builds on Win10.
I pushed her onto Mint and she was able to get up and running in a few hours despite being very nervous about wanting to learn Linux. She's still scared of Ubuntu (my default) but she loves Mint.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Debian is a pessimized distribution. It's compiled for the worst possible case. It has a filesystem layout guaranteed to cause conflicts between packages and they've not bothered to resolve those except where it's "noticeable". The default disk layout is sub-optimal. It puts ideology over getting anything done.
I'm not impressed by the others, either.
Frankly, I'm horrified by the state of Linux distributions. That people voted Debian up is not a surprise, however, because nobody expects the best from their computers any more. I used to run three MUDs on a 16 MHz 386SX, in addition to a mail server, DNS server, modem pool and an instance of X. I could compile GateD or Perl in the background without interfering with anyone's work. Did it do less? Well, it had just as many fonts in LaTeX, so I could still do all the DTP that Libre Office can do. Admittedly, I couldn't WYSIWYG it but nobody does that with LaTeX anyway and anyone who does it for regular documents is paying far too much attention to presentation and not enough to content.
(I forget where I saw the article on PowerPoint, but it argued that this emphasis on presentation was endangering R&D, promoting really bad ideas over much better ones, and was responsible for endangering the modern economy and several western democracies. Ok, maybe they overstated the threat to the economy, since you have to have one to endanger.)
Modern Linux is not as fast because of poor design choices by distros. We have no Linux Desktop because of even worse design choices by distros.
https://itvision.altervista.or...
These problems are THEIR fault (and the fault of OSDL's closed-door meetings with vendors). Yes, in almost every respect, Windows is worse. But Windows has mindshare and enough money to afford to be worse. Microsoft should have been broken up in 1998 when it was ordered to do so by the courts, but the appeals court reversed that - probably under government pressure - and we have to live with the fact that we're competing against Sauron.
And, yes, GET OFF MY LAWN!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...it's the 1995 Ford F-150
Next!
I'd rather run RHEL (or CentOS or some other derivative) on a server. I rarely see Debian packages for business applications, but it seems like they always have ones for RH.
I suspect people who are paid to do Linux system administration do not make up a significant percentage of Linux Journal's readership.
#DeleteChrome
c'mon, SUSE is worse than Caldera
It's working. Suse got me off Windows back in 2009 then I tried Mint a year later and been using it since and have had minimal hw/sw issues.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I'm sharing my opinion: I think Debian is still king because of mostly 3 key areas it shines: simplicity, choice and community support.
Ubuntu thrived for some years on Deb's back, as it brought its simplicity front and center, all wrapped up in tried and true UI choices with Gnome (2) and Xorg (eventually birthing its own now defunct attempts at GUI - Unity, and dserver - MIR), and they spiced it up by pulling a RedHat on the support part: "hey, we got all the good things of Debian 6 months later, bicuzz pro QA and commercial level polish yadayada". Choice was, barely, still there, through different flavoured ISOs ranging from GUI preference to architectures and whatnot, and naming each individually for branding purposes, something typical from consumer-grade software.
It was well and good, until QA and polish stopped losing focus to marketing and stupid endeavours like dethroning Android or the tablet "market".
Like many, I was the kind who believed [insert letter]Ubuntu-like flavouring was essential in a distro. But now, in all honesty, I believe there are exactly 3 separations a distro really, truly needs - to GUI or not to GUI (Desktop vs server/headless), net-install vs 5 DVDs with all the internet in 'em bicuzz Africa and pacific Islands; and obviously, if you can live without compiling (most of us do), architecture. Release-wise, there should still be LTS, stable and, well, straight-from-the-chunk, but those are a matter of politics involved and not exactly "static" choices, such as the afforementioned architecture, server/desktop-bound or www-availability. Debian follows all these principles, and packs each flavour with exactly what they need.
The thing Debian makes best though is not their choice of flavouring, but the way they pass control onto you, the user. From the simply amazing installer:- you want a GUI? Pick from this not-so-verbose, yet essential list. You wanna continue this installation from ssh? Kewl, install ssh now, set up basic drivers, network and creds, and you're good to go. Do you want that graphical install instead? Maybe you want the ncurses one bicuzz you fancy them Nvidia GPUs which won't work until you can wget them from closedsource.nvidiacorp.bad.org ? Install gparted for all-you-can-eat partition choice. I'm not even getting on the REALLY advanced stuff.
Systemd, grub, dpkg, so straightforward, no complications. Aptitude and that god-send APT. Debian has the tools to get everyone NOT thinking too hard on stuff like dependency management, but still make an effort, ever feeling in control if need be. Updating, and UPGRADING are a breeze, both for individual packages and the distribution itself. Unnatended, or even hot upgrades work as intended and crash much less than most others - something only achieved with a very deep level of organization on the core development. Migrations to new releases are easy. Migrations to new machines are feasible without dedicated backup tools (although they are great if you can get them configured properly), and even when you have a problem, it's usually recoverable with a Google search or 2.
And the thing I love most about Debian, pretty much the same thing that makes me still love Windows: it doesn't fail on 95% the hardware people want to get it working. To y'all OS developers out there - packaging your distributions with the "bare minimum" of drivers is NOT that great a feature when you want your software to have the support a stable OS deserves (*cough* Archlinux*cough) - if you don't have a community large enough ABLE TO BOOT your OS effortlessly, there won't be a community to WANT to give back, and will end up with LACKING community support - read: death sentence in FOSS (well, unless you're RedHat).
It's that simply really. If a critical mass doesn't get to even install your OS successfully, you won't ever get the traction you need for it to be mainstream. But hey, maybe that's not what you want...
Getouttahere!
Ive noticed this poll does not take into account Linux enthusiast community activity and for that im truly offended. How can you enjoy a debian or fedora properly if you've never taken the time to learn and appreciate the minutia of linux?
My personal setup --which i know slashdotters will find more than substantial in its refinement-- is a punch-card copy of Linux from Scratch operating on a 1986 Teddy Ruxpin with a custom 4.15 kernel, emulating the disk elevators from the 2.2 kernel, and of course operating within a Docker/Rancher/Kubernetes/Mom's spaghetti abstraction layer. Dont worry, I'm always keen to run the Ruby/node.js implementation of this kernel for mission critical applications such as my custom Teddy Ruxpin compiled drivers for the Ge Signa HD magnetic resonance imaging machine. Mouse support can be found in my Arduino/openRISC implementation using a small shopping cart packed with old Tamagochi's. as one would typically come to expect for performance, they run Go drivers sandboxed in a Rust framework. Teddy Ruxpin is, without a doubt, the only hardware true Linux fans should be using in 2018
Good people go to bed earlier.
This poll should be broken into two categories, desktop and server.
Like some others have stated here...
Server = Debian
Desktop = Linux Mint
Plus Raspian on the Raspberry Pi. I have a smooth running ecosystem in my home with this combination, 3 servers, 2 desktops, 1 laptop, and several Pi devices.
Good god almighty it's useful.
REALLY useful.
matthew. kuiash.
Every other distro is illegal.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Best support?
Best security?
Best feature set (for what purpose?)?
Best for non-technical users?
Best for power users and/or developers?
Most mature/robust?
Highest performance?
Best to know for getting a job?
I use Mint for casual use and CentOS for heavy lifting. Mint because I like the interface and CentOS because having Red Hat skills is useful for finding and/or continuing employment. I'm sure that if my criteria were different my Linux flavor would be different also.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Microsoft should have been broken up in 1998
I'm looking at the title to this article and I think maybe you have been asleep for 20 years
We have no Linux Desktop
who really gives a shit? linux is on all of the supercomputers and it's really the only choice for cloud computing (you do know what that is, yes?) Desktops need big $$$ to spend on new development all the time because there is always a better display or pointing device or whatever. Linux has no such big $$$ backer. Get fucking real, idiot.
What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
was it a best free Linux poll?
I use Fedora, because I like to spend hours fixing things every time I attempt a software upgrade.
This is probably the better answer for my server use. In our environment, we have lots of closed source software like Oracle. In addition, the backup and monitoring software didn't work on non-Red Hat distos for many years. Since we're not a large team managing 1,200 servers now, consistency in the Unix environment is important too hence we have mostly (for current systems) Red Hat.
And since I'm working on similar stuff at home, my home environment is CentOS for the most part with a few Red Hat systems.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
The best Linux distro is: Lively Banana!
No, wait, it's: Quaint Cephalopod!
No, in fact it's: Startled Swallow!
Actually it's: Bucolic Baobab!
No systemd and it does all the things I want. In particular, it let's me run me-tv, which doesn't run well on ubuntu because of something to do with gui libraries. (Each side blames the other last I checked, which I admit was quite awhile ago.) Before Devuan, I had to run me-tv on Linux Mint, which is a very good distro (if you're comfortable with systemd, which I'm not.)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I think the book you are trying to remember is this one: How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid: The Faulty Causality, Sloppy Logic, Decontextualized Data, and Seductive Showmanship That Have Taken Over Our Thinking – February 28, 2012 by Franck Frommer (Author), George Holoch (Translator).
If you just google "PowerPoint Makes You Stupid" you will find a range of articles on the topic.
Ubuntu crashed; Apt sucked. Fedora just works. I haven't had a problem with
Redhat products in at least a decade. When I tried Ubuntu on the same hardware,
it just crashed and crashed. Unity sucked. (I hate Gnome too. Mate or Cinnamon
is the way to go.).
Fedora ain't perfect, but Ubuntu is for the religious zealots, exWindows newbies, and
the uncultured.
over a billion dollars. They use Fedora as a testbed for new software. They have a good business plan.
since debian sucked systemd's cock then as far as i'm concerned it can fuck right off. way to alienate your loyal userbase, assholes.
This is an easy question. People make it way to complex. The best Linux is the one you like.
There are a lot of dimensions that can make or prevent a distribution the best one.
From my experience, in no special order:
Installation:
=========
Some distributions cannot recognize the hardware, particularly less common video cards (I'm testing a SiS based one) or cannot boot/install. Tried in different computers and in various versions, Manjaro always proved to be too much for me -- while other distros work flawlessly.
Xfce had a little regression in last Mint in that it requires an external TV to be on or its configuration is lost.
DE:
===
First of all, it must offer uniformity throughout all apps. This is easily said but hard to achieve (not to say impossible). Second, there are common shortcuts (mouse & keyboard) which must be provided, lest we have a second-grade use experience -- like on Windows, for instance.
Being too powerful is also a problem. I find KDE great but people systematically destroyed the desktop, so I had to opt for Xfce as less prone to "improvement".
KDE also means 1 day configuring things. LXDE means some 4 hours and Xfce is OK in about 2 hours -- all that to make the three DEs work more or less the same way (focus-follow-mouse, windows not raising on internal click etc.)
Language:
========
English is OK with me, but not everyone in my family can use it. Does it have my language? If not it's game over.
Mirrors:
======
Having fast mirrors is a necessity these days. Linux offers constant updates, which must be short to avoid extensive interruptions.
Architectures:
===========
a) 64-bit is overrated; it means slight performance gains at best and 32-bit h/w is not just about old machines;
b) 32-bit support is very nice -- if you really need speed, get a solid-state drive;
The distribution supports only 64-bit? It's out.
Additionally it would be nice to have two 32-bit options, e.g.:
Option 1 with PAE and using SSE2 and
Option 2 without such things.
Packages:
========
It's not about the number: it's about not having to install software from different, untrusted origins.
Particular features:
===============
As an example, I need a special library which is provided as a ".deb" package (for dealing with smart cards), but I need also support for my printer -- whose drivers are in ".rpm" (but automatically translated with Alien).
Look'n'feel:
=========
Aesthetics, usability and response time do make a difference at the end of the day. It's not just the "wow" factor, but how natural the interface seems to the user.
As a final note, distros in a sense are one step further than the OS. They also offer a kind of "environment" which goes beyond the desktop. It is nice to have light office applications, but for heavy use Libreoffice is a better option. Nonetheless, a few distros (Makulu comes to mind) offer alternatives and that's a good way to get to know them -- as well as excellent Marketing for such products.
We should be thinking about that and interoperability among apps, too. Imagine if we could extend the communication that we expect intra suite to the whole inside of a distribution, with automatic conversions and the like?
I got meself a refurbished ThinkPad X220 for college and portable web development, pimped it out with 8GB RAM and a 250GB SSD and thought I'd try something new off the beaten Debian/Ubuntu track.
Manjaro i3 seemed like a nice candidate. And sure enough, it holds up nicely. Rolling updates (manjaro is arch based) and i3 is a very neat tiling WM that's really fast and nice and easy to configure. The manjaro i3 defaults are nice as is the turquoise on dark-grey design. Technical but still modern and sleek.
Manjaro is the new kid on the block and might just be yet another passing distro-fad but for now it holds up and I'm enjoying it. yaourt is a CLI tool for installing non-standard packages and so far everything I've needed could be found on AUR.
Bottom line: Wanna try something new with i3 as default? Yours truly recommends Manjaro i3. Give it a shot,
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
News for nerds, indeed. But does it matter?
It might be Mac OS X... Well if not that lets see how well it does what Mac OS X does:
1) easy way from the startup disk/usb drive create a Mirror system(all partitions)
2) easy way from the startup disk to install to a SSD/HD accelerated system
3) easy way to get WIFI working
4) easy way to get accelerated 2d/3d graphics working as good as Windows 10
5) easy way to boot the thing from UEFI
6) easy way to get chrome/Firefox to work
7) easy way to get a known/modern Antivirus to work
I am telling you the linux community is spinning it's wheels bitching about systemd/initd, iptables/firewalld, X/MIR and others when they should get the shit they have to work. VDI on VMware with windows is cake, remote usb works, remote 3d accelerated graphics, sound from the VM to the end station, linked clones and non persistent images. Doing it with Linux is a pain in the ass if not impossible.
For servers centOS with Webmin makes configuring any UNIX/Linux machine the same or VERY similar. Webmin supports as tier 1 OSes Solaris, BSD and RedHat/CentOS.
I like the fact that the year of the Linux desktop will be never. I am pleased to see Android on +2 billion devices. At one time in the win16/32 world you could never get a developer to look at any OS, they would say Windows outnumbers everything else 100 to 1. Now us Linux guys get to tell the Windows Developers that Android outnumbers Windows 100 to 1 and they better start learning Linux and Android soon...
Your Average Joe
If you are going to add numbers into your Linux Journal quote, at least add the right ones...
Server: Slackware
Ad-hoc: Slax (flash bootable, derived from Slackware)
On the road: Whatever a Model S runs.
Desktop: Various, still havn't found the One Perfect Distribution.
Phone: Android + root + busybox
I have been using Slackware since about 1997. 20 years later it's still the distribution I know best and feel most comfortable with. It takes a traditional approach to things, and I'm an old (59) semi-retired programmer so that suits me. That doesn't make it the best, it just makes it the one I am most likely to consider first when deciding what to install on a given box.
The best distro is of course systemd. Oh sorry it's not yet a distro, but it's almost there.
In a serious note, Ubuntu/Mint/Debian are one and the same in my opinion.
captcha: wisdoms
This is the only comment mentioning Arch.
Thank you.
There is only one real reason why people started hating systemd. It brings less freedom. Applications are starting to be dependent too much on systemd. If you decide to run a different init system you'll get a bunch of issues that need to be addressed.
I ordered from Amazon Distribution Network my "Penguin Stuffie" and placed it on my desktop.
I do use several distros, Manjaro for my dektop, with Debian testing and Fedora also installed.
But when I have read stats abut desktop use it seems Ubuntu is still used by almost 50% of the Linux desktop users.
I used to love Debian but lately is has become very... unstable for me. New 9.x installations no longer boot on my machine because nouveau is going titsup on my nvidia GTX960 (which by today's standards is old), so I have to blacklist it and install the proprietary driver. Which is okay because I'd use the proprietary driver anyway, but my point is the boot was broken.
Then, I installed xfce, my favorite theme, configured everything the way I want, all is fine... until I left it alone for a few minutes and the screen locker kicked in... and I was greeted with a black screen having nothing but a throbbing prompt in the upper left corner. Cycling the power was the only thing I could do. Reminded me of Windows 95 hard lock-ups.
Then, I installed wine for Steam for some windows only games.... which segfault on start.
Then I installed Ubuntu, which booted okay, with a working screen lock that doesn't shit itself, and Steam in wine works perfectly, was even able to install vulkan and play some vulkan games.
On the server side I also prefer Ubuntu. Because of SAUCE patches in Ubuntu kernel that fix a lot of things. Because of AppArmor being essentially the upstream in Ubuntu. Because the latest mega-batch of AppArmor fixes is not available in Debian's 4.9 kernel, so you'd have to use the kernel from backports which starts a very week-long adventure of What Next Is Broken whack-a-mole because you installed a very newer kernel and random shit starts to break at random times.
Ubuntu, because of HWE so I can have stable server base and still get all the nice new things in newer kernels. Which is important because the kernel developers would prefer everyone to use only latest kernels and a lot of things is either not backported or backported badly. See this for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKadXpQLmPU
Ubuntu because I have the option to use kernel live patching. Ubuntu because my server use is corporate and one day I might want to subscribe to paid support. Ubuntu because their NIH syndrome is actually a good thing. They invent new things and get shits from the community. It's fucking FREE software, as in BEER, you paid NOTHING, so shut the fuck up and go use another distro if you don't like it.
BTW... the poll is on linuxjournal. If you asked on Omgubuntu, guess what would be at the top. If you asked on , guess what would be at the top...
eOS but only once I've modified it to bits. It's default state is a pain, too overbearing and quite frankly doesn't make sense - as any power user will become frustrated with the user imposed boundaties and break them immediately.
Still it is beautiful beast and it makes it easier to do (some) of the tricky stuff, within it's walls.
Win 10 is ok-ish once all the spyware is turned off and have your firewall on paranoid settings- but it's nothing to write home about.
OS X is great, but you have to live within it's perfectly curated walls (a very expensive prison to live in).
eOS is kind of both Win & Mac squeezed together run by a linux core, with a much nicer version of Gnome 2 glued on top. Annoyingly its not fully functional with everything in the Linux world (but that might change a bit more in the next release).
Centos when you want clean, simple, quality controlled server. Debian/Ubuntu when you want more options but less quality control and more complexity.
I'd have to second this - for things that matter and where you don't want to be working 24/7, RH is your goto. I don't think I'd run Debian on anything that matters. Although I do miss my Sun boxes, throw them in a closet and forget about them for 10 years.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Overwhelmingly, most organizations, at least in the US, run RedHat, or one of its children, with, so far as I know, CentOS being the most-used.
We were using RH at AT&T 9 yrs ago; where I work now, for a federal contractor (civilian sector) we have a few RH licenses... and the other 97% of our systems are CentOS.
For almost 20+ years of sysadmin work and IT direction, Slackware has been my Linux choice if I needed something quick, reliable and straightforward. If I went away from MacOS on the desktop, I have no doubt I'd be running Slack there again as well. Simplicity is a great thing.
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
...would have won, but it's users are still compiling their browsers.
Out of interest, why do you prefer not to use Debian for serious matters?
I ask as someone with not much experience using Linux - I run Mint on my laptop, and have a couple of Debian boxes running simple things like SpamAssassin and MySQL and Dovecot. I've found Debian to be perfectly acceptable to use and setup without a GUI, but it sounds like you have some deeper experience than me.
Fair question - number 1: I don't have to provide any justification for RH - they have enterprise support and are accepted by management because of contractual options (as in there are contracts with RH that dictate how things are supported, who's responsible, etc, all those business type things pure techies don't usually pay much attention to) Debian doesn't, at least not as of the last time I had to go through the process of getting a new installation and configuration approved. There's no need for #2, because that right there is the skyscraper you have to leap before any other regular hurdles pop up.
FWIW, when I run Linux as a desktop I too choose Mint. I do not like RH/CentOS/Fedora for this purpose.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Aha, yes, a good point. I hadn't considered any contractual or compliance issues, as the business I work for is far to small for it to be a real issue. I can definitely see how an OS that makes no guarantees or commitments and offer no lines of responsibility may be a big issue for some businesses.
Thanks for answering my question.
Happy to. When you're rolling out projects above the 6 figure range all of a sudden those license agreements and support costs become minor compared to potential losses. Truth be told, it's a simple case of CYA - you used accepted and covered software and had no reason to expect something like 'x' to occur sounds a whole lot better to management then "well, this fly by night open source distro had this super cool widget we wanted to use and it seemed stable so...." You can tell which of those 2 cases results in someone unintentionally looking for a new job, as in projects of that size you're paid to mitigate risks, not increase them.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.